byMaureen Meehan, Benzinga Editor May 7, 2023 3:35 PM | 2 min read
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Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy suggested that marijuana and fatherlessness were to blame for Saturday’s deadly mall shooting in Allen, Texas that left nine dead including the shooter.
"I think we ought to look at the issue of fatherlessness. We also ought to look at weed," the Fox host said in a conversation with a GOP congressional candidate Dr. Tre Pennie.
Fatherlessness?
As speculation and misinformation on social media run amok regarding the gunman’s identity and his motive, neither was immediately known because the police remained tight-lipped while they investigated.
But then there’s Twitter where tweets from suspected white supremacists were fueling an anti-Black narrative. And, right on cue, Fox’s Campos-Duffy dragged out the debunked but not forgotten ‘absent black fathers’ myth.
Blaming cannabis for mass shootings and myriad other issues that ail society has been Fox’s bread and butter.
Update: CNN reported late Sunday afternoon that the suspect in the shooting was identified as 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia. He was clad in black body armor and appeared to have had extra magazines strapped in his chest gear.
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Daily Mass Shootings
According to the Gun Violence Archive, a database of shootings in the U.S., there have been 199 “mass shootings,” which the archive defines as the shooting of at least four people, in 2023. This comes out to more than one per day as we’re only at day 128 of this year.
Thoughts And Prayers And Bible-Thumping Are Not Doing The Trick
On MSNBC's Katie Phang Show in a Sunday interview with Texas State Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D), she brought up a comment made earlier on CNN by Texas Rep. Keith Self (R) who was asked about the fact that people don't think "thoughts and prayers" are enough to stop the endless gun violence gripping the country.
Self, who represents Allen, Tx. told CNN: "Well, those are people that don't believe in an almighty God who, who has, who is absolutely in control of our lives."
Gutierrez told Phang that Rep. Self should be ashamed of hiding behind the Bible and that his remark was unconscionable. Gutierrez went so far as to suggest Self should be removed from office.
"The God that I believe in gives us free will. At the end of the day, we are empowered, sure, by God and by our constituencies to go out and create change… positive change," Gutierrez said. "We are killing babies, we are killing family members, grandmothers in this country. It is unconscionable for this man to use the Bible or God in any way to defend these positions. I think he needs to be removed from office, I mean, that's how unconscionable this is."
